A Defense of Calvinism
Spurgeon's best sermon on the doctrine's of grace.
A Defense of
Calvinism
by Charles Spurgeon
The
old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul
preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my
conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing
as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my
gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through
England again.
IT
IS A GREAT THING to begin the Christian life by believing good solid
doctrine. Some people have received twenty different "gospels"
in as many years; how many more they will accept before they get to
their journey's end, it would be difficult to predict. I thank God that
He early taught me the gospel, and I have been so perfectly satisfied
with it, that I do not want to know any other. Constant change of creed
is sure loss. If a tree has to be taken up two or three times a year,
you will not need to build a very large loft in which to store the
apples. When people are always shifting their doctrinal principles, they
are not likely to bring forth much fruit to the glory of God. It is good
for young believers to begin with a firm hold upon those great
fundamental doctrines which the Lord has taught in His Word. Why, if I
believed what some preach about the temporary, trumpery salvation which
only lasts for a time, I would scarcely be at all grateful for it; but
when I know that those whom God saves He saves with an everlasting
salvation, when I know that He gives to them an everlasting
righteousness, when I know that He settles them on an everlasting
foundation of everlasting love, and that He will bring them to His
everlasting kingdom, oh, then I do wonder, and I am astonished that such
a blessing as this should ever have been given to me!
"Pause,
my soul! adore, and wonder!
Ask, 'Oh, why such love to me?'
Grace hath put me in the number
Of the Saviour's family:
Hallelujah!
Thanks, eternal thanks, to Thee!
I
suppose there are some persons whose minds naturally incline towards the
doctrine of free-will. I can only say that mine inclines as naturally
towards the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sometimes, when I see some of
the worst characters in the street, I feel as if my heart must burst
forth in tears of gratitude that God has never let me act as they have
done! I have thought, if God had left me alone, and had not touched me
by His grace, what a great sinner I should have been! I should have run
to the utmost lengths of sin, dived into the very depths of evil, nor
should I have stopped at any vice or folly, if God had not restrained
me. I feel that I should have been a very king of sinners, if God had
let me alone. I cannot understand the reason why I am saved, except upon
the ground that God would have it so. I cannot, if I look ever so
earnestly, discover any kind of reason in myself why I should be a
partaker of Divine grace. If I am not at this moment without Christ, it
is only because Christ Jesus would have His will with me, and that will
was that I should be with Him where He is, and should share His glory. I
can put the crown nowhere but upon the head of Him whose mighty grace
has saved me from going down into the pit. Looking back on my past life,
I can see that the dawning of it all was of God; of God effectively. I
took no torch with which to light the sun, but the sun enlightened me. I
did not commence my spiritual life—no, I rather kicked, and struggled
against the things of the Spirit: when He drew me, for a time I did not
run after Him: there was a natural hatred in my soul of everything holy
and good. Wooings were lost upon me—warnings were cast to the
wind—thunders were despised; and as for the whispers of His love, they
were rejected as being less than nothing and vanity. But, sure I am, I
can say now, speaking on behalf of myself, "He only is my
salvation." It was He who turned my heart, and brought me down on
my knees before Him. I can in very deed, say with Doddridge and
Toplady—
"Grace
taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes o'erflow
and
coming to this moment, I can add—
"'Tis
grace has kept me to this day,
And will not let me go."
Well
can I remember the manner in which I learned the doctrines of grace in a
single instant. Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still
believed the old things I had heard continually from the pulpit, and did
not see the grace of God. When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was
doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no
idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at
first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when first I
received those truths in my own soul—when they were, as John Bunyan
says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I
felt that I had grown on a sudden from a babe into a man—that I had
made progress in Scriptural knowledge, through having found, once for
all, the clue to the truth of God. One week-night, when I was sitting in
the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher's sermon,
for I did not believe it. The thought struck me, How did you come to be
a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord?
The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not have sought
Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me
seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to
pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to
read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in
a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was
the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to
me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire
to make this my constant confession, "I ascribe my change wholly to
God."
I
once attended a service where the text happened to be, "He shall
choose our inheritance for us;" and the good man who occupied the
pulpit was more than a little of an Arminian. Therefore, when he
commenced, he said, "This passage refers entirely to our temporal
inheritance, it has nothing whatever to do with our everlasting destiny,
for," said he, "we do not want Christ to choose for us in the
matter of Heaven or hell. It is so plain and easy, that every man who
has a grain of common sense will choose Heaven, and any person would
know better than to choose hell. We have no need of any superior
intelligence, or any greater Being, to choose Heaven or hell for us. It
is left to our own free-will, and we have enough wisdom given us,
sufficiently correct means to judge for ourselves," and therefore,
as he very logically inferred, there was no necessity for Jesus Christ,
or anyone, to make a choice for us. We could choose the inheritance for
ourselves without any assistance. "Ah!" I thought, "but,
my good brother, it may be very true that we could, but I think we
should want something more than common sense before we should choose
aright."
First,
let me ask, must we not all of us admit an over-ruling Providence, and
the appointment of Jehovah's hand, as to the means whereby we came into
this world? Those men who think that, afterwards, we are left to our own
free-will to choose this one or the other to direct our steps, must
admit that our entrance into the world was not of our own will, but that
God had then to choose for us. What circumstances were those in our
power which led us to elect certain persons to be our parents? Had we
anything to do with it? Did not God Himself appoint our parents, native
place, and friends? Could He not have caused me to be born with the skin
of the Hottentot, brought forth by a filthy mother who would nurse me in
her "kraal," and teach me to bow down to Pagan gods, quite as
easily as to have given me a pious mother, who would each morning and
night bend her knee in prayer on my behalf? Or, might He not, if He had
pleased, have given me some profligate to have been my parent, from
whose lips I might have early heard fearful, filthy, and obscene
language? Might He not have placed me where I should have had a drunken
father, who would have immured me in a very dungeon of ignorance, and
brought me up in the chains of crime? Was it not God's Providence that I
had so happy a lot, that both my parents were His children, and
endeavoured to train me up in the fear of the Lord?
John
Newton used to tell a whimsical story, and laugh at it, too, of a good
woman who said, in order to prove the doctrine of election, "Ah!
sir, the Lord must d me before I was born, or else He would not have
seen anything in me to love afterwards." I am sure it is true in my
case; I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain
that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am
sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen
me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me,
for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked
upon me with special love. So I am forced to accept that great Biblical
doctrine. I recollect an Arminian brother telling me that he had read
the Scriptures through a score or more times, and could never find the
doctrine of election in them. He added that he was sure he would have
done so if it had been there, for he read the Word on his knees. I said
to him, "I think you read the Bible in a very uncomfortable
posture, and if you had read it in your easy chair, you would have been
more likely to understand it. Pray, by all means, and the more, the
better, but it is a piece of superstition to think there is anything in
the posture in which a man puts himself for reading: and as to reading
through the Bible twenty times without having found anything about the
doctrine of election, the wonder is that you found anything at all: you
must have galloped through it at such a rate that you were not likely to
have any intelligible idea of the meaning of the Scriptures."
If
it would be marvelous to see one river leap up from the earth
full-grown, what would it be to gaze upon a vast spring from which all
the rivers of the earth should at once come bubbling up, a million of
them born at a birth? What a vision would it be! Who can conceive it.
And yet the love of God is that fountain, from which all the rivers of
mercy, which have ever gladdened our race—all the rivers of grace in
time, and of glory hereafter—take their rise. My soul, stand thou at
that sacred fountain-head, and adore and magnify, for ever and ever,
God, even our Father, who hath loved us! In the very beginning, when
this great universe lay in the mind of God, like unborn forests in the
acorn cup; long ere the echoes awoke the solitudes; before the mountains
were brought forth; and long ere the light flashed through the sky, God
loved His chosen creatures. Before there was any created being—when
the ether was not fanned by an angel's wing, when space itself had not
an existence, when there was nothing save God alone—even then, in that
loneliness of Deity, and in that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels
moved with love for His chosen. Their names were written on His heart,
and then were they dear to His soul. Jesus loved His people before the
foundation of the world—even from eternity! and when He called me by
His grace, He said to me, "I d thee with an everlasting love:
therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee."
Then,
in the fulness of time, He purchased me with His blood; He let His heart
run out in one deep gaping wound for me long ere I loved Him. Yea, when
He first came to me, did I not spurn Him? When He knocked at the door,
and asked for entrance, did I not drive Him away, and do despite to His
grace? Ah, I can remember that I full often did so until, at last, by
the power of His effectual grace, He said, "I must, I will come
in;" and then He turned my heart, and made me love Him. But even
till now I should have resisted Him, had it not been for His grace.
Well, then since He purchased me when I was dead in sins, does it not
follow, as a consequence necessary and logical, that He must d me first?
Did my Saviour die for me because I believed on Him? No; I was not then
in existence; I had then no being. Could the Saviour, therefore, have
died because I had faith, when I myself was not yet born? Could that
have been possible? Could that have been the origin of the Saviour's
love towards me? Oh! no; my Saviour died for me long before I believed.
"But," says someone, "He foresaw that you would have
faith; and, therefore, He loved you." What did He foresee about my
faith? Did He foresee that I should get that faith myself, and that I
should believe on Him of myself? No; Christ could not foresee that,
because no Christian man will ever say that faith came of itself without
the gift and without the working of the Holy Spirit. I have met with a
great many believers, and talked with them about this matter; but I
never knew one who could put his hand on his heart, and say, "I
believed in Jesus without the assistance of the Holy Spirit."
I
am bound to the doctrine of the depravity of the human heart, because I
find myself depraved in heart, and have daily proofs that in my flesh
there dwelleth no good thing. If God enters into covenant with unfallen
man, man is so insignificant a creature that it must be an act of
gracious condescension on the Lord's part; but if God enters into
covenant with sinful man, he is then so offensive a creature that it
must be, on God's part, an act of pure, free, rich, sovereign grace.
When the Lord entered into covenant with me, I am sure that it was all
of grace, nothing else but grace. When I remember what a den of unclean
beasts and birds my heart was, and how strong was my unrenewed will, how
obstinate and rebellious against the sovereignty of the Divine rule, I
always feel inclined to take the very lowest room in my Father's house,
and when I enter Heaven, it will be to go among the less than the least
of all saints, and with the chief of sinners.
The
late lamented Mr. Denham has put, at the foot of his portrait, a most
admirable text, "Salvation is of the Lord." That is just an
epitome of Calvinism; it is the sum and substance of it. If anyone
should ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply, "He is
one who says, Salvation is of the Lord." I cannot find in Scripture
any other doctrine than this. It is the essence of the Bible. "He
only is my rock and my salvation." Tell me anything contrary to
this truth, and it will be a heresy; tell me a heresy, and I shall find
its essence here, that it has departed from this great, this
fundamental, this rock-truth, "God is my rock and my
salvation." What is the heresy of Rome, but the addition of
something to the perfect merits of Jesus Christ—the bringing in of the
works of the flesh, to assist in our justification? And what is the
heresy of Arminianism but the addition of something to the work of the
Redeemer? Every heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover
itself here. I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing
as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is
called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is
the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel,
if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we
preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless
we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love
of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it
upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen
people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a
gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers
the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having
once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.
"If
ever it should come to pass,
That sheep of Christ might fall away,
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a day."
If
one dear saint of God had perished, so might all; if one of the covenant
ones be lost, so may all be; and then there is no gospel promise true,
but the Bible is a lie, and there is nothing in it worth my acceptance.
I will be an infidel at once when I can believe that a saint of God can
ever fall finally. If God hath loved me once, then He will love me for
ever. God has a master-mind; He arranged everything in His gigantic
intellect long before He did it; and once having settled it, He never
alters it, "This shall be done," saith He, and the iron hand
of destiny marks it down, and it is brought to pass. "This is My
purpose," and it stands, nor can earth or hell alter it. "This
is My decree," saith He, "promulgate it, ye holy angels; rend
it down from the gate of Heaven, ye devils, if ye can; but ye cannot
alter the decree, it shall stand for ever." God altereth not His
plans; why should He? He is Almighty, and therefore can perform His
pleasure. Why should He? He is the All-wise, and therefore cannot have
planned wrongly. Why should He? He is the everlasting God, and therefore
cannot die before His plan is accomplished. Why should He change? Ye
worthless atoms of earth, ephemera of a day, ye creeping insects upon
this bay-leaf of existence, ye may change your plans, but He shall
never, never change His. Has He told me that His plan is to save me? If
so, I am for ever safe.
"My
name from the palms of His hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impress'd on His heart it remains,
In marks of indelible grace."
I
do not know how some people, who believe that a Christian can fall from
grace, manage to be happy. It must be a very commendable thing in them
to be able to get through a day without despair. If I did not believe
the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, I think I should
be of all men the most miserable, because I should lack any ground of
comfort. I could not say, whatever state of heart I came into, that I
should be like a well-spring of water, whose stream fails not; I should
rather have to take the comparison of an intermittent spring, that might
stop on a sudden, or a reservoir, which I had no reason to expect would
always be full. I believe that the happiest of Christians and the truest
of Christians are those who never dare to doubt God, but who take His
Word simply as it stands, and believe it, and ask no questions, just
feeling assured that if God has said it, it will be so. I bear my
willing testimony that I have no reason, nor even the shadow of a
reason, to doubt my Lord, and I challenge Heaven, and earth, and hell,
to bring any proof that God is untrue. From the depths of hell I call
the fiends, and from this earth I call the tried and afflicted
believers, and to Heaven I appeal, and challenge the long experience of
the blood-washed host, and there is not to be found in the three realms
a single person who can bear witness to one fact which can disprove the
faithfulness of God, or weaken His claim to be trusted by His servants.
There are many things that may or may not happen, but this I know shall
happen—
"He
shall present my soul,
Unblemish'd and complete,
Before the glory of His face,
With joys divinely great."
All
the purposes of man have been defeated, but not the purposes of God. The
promises of man may be broken—many of them are made to be broken—but
the promises of God shall all be fulfilled. He is a promise-maker, but
He never was a promise-breaker; He is a promise-keeping God, and every
one of His people shall prove it to be so. This is my grateful, personal
confidence, "The Lord will perfect that which concerneth
me"—unworthy me, lost and ruined me. He will yet save me; and—
"I,
among the blood-wash'd throng,
Shall wave the palm, and wear the crown,
And shout loud victory."
I
go to a land which the plough of earth hath never upturned, where it is
greener than earth's best pastures, and richer than her most abundant
harvests ever saw. I go to a building of more gorgeous architecture than
man hath ever builded; it is not of mortal design; it is "a
building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
Heavens." All I shall know and enjoy in Heaven, will be given to me
by the Lord, and I shall say, when at last I appear before Him—
"Grace
all the work shall crown
Through everlasting days;
It lays in Heaven the topmost stone,
And well deserves the praise."
I
know there are some who think it necessary to their system of theology
to limit the merit of the blood of Jesus: if my theological system
needed such a limitation, I would cast it to the winds. I cannot, I dare
not allow the thought to find a lodging in my mind, it seems so near
akin to blasphemy. In Christ's finished work I see an ocean of merit; my
plummet finds no bottom, my eye discovers no shore. There must be
sufficient efficacy in the blood of Christ, if God had so willed it, to
have saved not only all in this world, but all in ten thousand worlds,
had they transgressed their Maker's law. Once admit infinity into the
matter, and limit is out of the question. Having a Divine Person for an
offering, it is not consistent to conceive of limited value; bound and
measure are terms inapplicable to the Divine sacrifice. The intent of
the Divine purpose fixes the application of the infinite offering, but
does not change it into a finite work. Think of the numbers upon whom
God has bestowed His grace already. Think of the countless hosts in
Heaven: if thou wert introduced there to-day, thou wouldst find it as
easy to tell the stars, or the sands of the sea, as to count the
multitudes that are before the throne even now. They have come from the
East, and from the West, from the North, and from the South, and they
are sitting down with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob in the
Kingdom of God; and beside those in Heaven, think of the saved ones on
earth. Blessed be God, His elect on earth are to be counted by millions,
I believe, and the days are coming, brighter days than these, when there
shall be multitudes upon multitudes brought to know the Saviour, and to
rejoice in Him. The Father's love is not for a few only, but for an
exceeding great company. "A great multitude, which no man could
number," will be found in Heaven. A man can reckon up to very high
figures; set to work your Newtons, your mightiest calculators, and they
can count great numbers, but God and God alone can tell the multitude of
His redeemed. I believe there will be more in Heaven than in hell. If
anyone asks me why I think so, I answer, because Christ, in everything,
is to "have the pre-eminence," and I cannot conceive how He
could have the pre-eminence if there are to be more in the dominions of
Satan than in Paradise. Moreover, I have never read that there is to be
in hell a great multitude, which no man could number. I rejoice to know
that the souls of all infants, as soon as they die, speed their way to
Paradise. Think what a multitude there is of them! Then there are
already in Heaven unnumbered myriads of the spirits of just men made
perfect—the redeemed of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and
tongues up till now; and there are better times coming, when the
religion of Christ shall be universal; when—
"He
shall reign from pole to pole,
With illimitable sway;"
when
whole kingdoms shall bow down before Him, and nations shall be born in a
day, and in the thousand years of the great millennial state there will
be enough saved to make up all the deficiencies of the thousands of
years that have gone before. Christ shall be Master everywhere, and His
praise shall be sounded in every land. Christ shall have the
pre-eminence at last; His train shall be far larger than that which
shall attend the chariot of the grim monarch of hell.
Some
persons love the doctrine of universal atonement because they say,
"It is so beautiful. It is a lovely idea that Christ should have
died for all men; it commends itself," they say, "to the
instincts of humanity; there is something in it full of joy and
beauty." I admit there is, but beauty may be often associated with
falsehood. There is much which I might admire in the theory of universal
redemption, but I will just show what the supposition necessarily
involves. If Christ on His cross intended to save every man, then He
intended to save those who were lost before He died. If the doctrine be
true, that He died for all men, then He died for some who were in hell
before He came into this world, for doubtless there were even then
myriads there who had been cast away because of their sins. Once again,
if it was Christ's intention to save all men, how deplorably has He been
disappointed, for we have His own testimony that there is a lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone, and into that pit of woe have been cast
some of the very persons who, according to the theory of universal
redemption, were bought with His blood. That seems to me a conception a
thousand times more repulsive than any of those consequences which are
said to be associated with the Calvinistic and Christian doctrine of
special and particular redemption. To think that my Saviour died for men
who were or are in hell, seems a supposition too horrible for me to
entertain. To imagine for a moment that He was the Substitute for all
the sons of men, and that God, having first punished the Substitute,
afterwards punished the sinners themselves, seems to conflict with all
my ideas of Divine justice. That Christ should offer an atonement and
satisfaction for the sins of all men, and that afterwards some of those
very men should be punished for the sins for which Christ had already
atoned, appears to me to be the most monstrous iniquity that could ever
have been imputed to Saturn, to Janus, to the goddess of the Thugs, or
to the most diabolical heathen deities. God forbid that we should ever
think thus of Jehovah, the just and wise and good!
There
is no soul living who holds more firmly to the doctrines of grace than I
do, and if any man asks me whether I am ashamed to be called a
Calvinist, I answer—I wish to be called nothing but a Christian; but
if you ask me, do I hold the doctrinal views which were held by John
Calvin, I reply, I do in the main hold them, and rejoice to avow it. But
far be it from me even to imagine that Zion contains none but
Calvinistic Christians within her walls, or that there are none saved
who do not hold our views. Most atrocious things have been spoken about
the character and spiritual condition of John Wesley, the modern prince
of Arminians. I can only say concerning him that, while I detest many of
the doctrines which he preached, yet for the man himself I have a
reverence second to no Wesleyan; and if there were wanted two apostles
to be added to the number of the twelve, I do not believe that there
could be found two men more fit to be so added than George Whitefield
and John Wesley. The character of John Wesley stands beyond all
imputation for self-sacrifice, zeal, holiness, and communion with God;
he lived far above the ordinary level of common Christians, and was one
"of whom the world was not worthy." I believe there are
multitudes of men who cannot see these truths, or, at least, cannot see
them in the way in which we put them, who nevertheless have received
Christ as their Saviour, and are as dear to the heart of the God of
grace as the soundest Calvinist in or out of Heaven.
I
do not think I differ from any of my Hyper-Calvinistic brethren in what
I do believe, but I differ from them in what they do not believe. I do
not hold any less than they do, but I hold a little more, and, I think,
a little more of the truth revealed in the Scriptures. Not only are
there a few cardinal doctrines, by which we can steer our ship North,
South, East, or West, but as we study the Word, we shall begin to learn
something about the North-west and North-east, and all else that lies
between the four cardinal points. The system of truth revealed in the
Scriptures is not simply one straight line, but two; and no man will
ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the
two lines at once. For instance, I read in one Book of the Bible,
"The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say,
Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take
the water of life freely." Yet I am taught, in another part of the
same inspired Word, that "it is not of him that willeth, nor of him
that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." I see, in one place,
God in providence presiding over all, and yet I see, and I cannot help
seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions,
in a great measure, to his own free-will. Now, if I were to declare that
man was so free to act that there was no control of God over his
actions, I should be driven very near to atheism; and if, on the other
hand, I should declare that God so over-rules all things that man is not
free enough to be responsible, I should be driven at once into
Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and yet that man is
responsible, are two facts that few can see clearly. They are believed
to be inconsistent and contradictory to each other. If, then, I find
taught in one part of the Bible that everything is fore-ordained, that
is true; and if I find, in another Scripture, that man is responsible
for all his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me
to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do
not believe they can ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but
they certainly shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that are so
nearly parallel, that the human mind which pursues them farthest will
never discover that they converge, but they do converge, and they will
meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth
doth spring.
It
is often said that the doctrines we believe have a tendency to lead us
to sin. I have heard it asserted most positively, that those high
doctrines which we love, and which we find in the Scriptures, are
licentious ones. I do not know who will have the hardihood to make that
assertion, when they consider that the holiest of men have been
believers in them. I ask the man who dares to say that Calvinism is a
licentious religion, what he thinks of the character of Augustine, or
Calvin, or Whitefield, who in successive ages were the great exponents
of the system of grace; or what will he say of the Puritans, whose works
are full of them? Had a man been an Arminian in those days, he would
have been accounted the vilest heretic breathing, but now we are looked
upon as the heretics, and they as the orthodox. We have gone back to the
old school; we can trace our descent from the apostles. It is that vein
of free-grace, running through the sermonizing of Baptists, which has
saved us as a denomination. Were it not for that, we should not stand
where we are today. We can run a golden line up to Jesus Christ Himself,
through a holy succession of mighty fathers, who all held these glorious
truths; and we can ask concerning them, "Where will you find holier
and better men in the world?" No doctrine is so calculated to
preserve a man from sin as the doctrine of the grace of God. Those who
have called it "a licentious doctrine" did not know anything
at all about it. Poor ignorant things, they little knew that their own
vile stuff was the most licentious doctrine under Heaven. If they knew
the grace of God in truth, they would soon see that there was no
preservative from lying like a knowledge that we are elect of God from
the foundation of the world. There is nothing like a belief in my
eternal perseverance, and the immutability of my Father's affection,
which can keep me near to Him from a motive of simple gratitude. Nothing
makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will
soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief
without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing
naturally begets the other. Of all men, those have the most
disinterested piety, the sublimest reverence, the most ardent devotion,
who believe that they are saved by grace, without works, through faith,
and that not of themselves, it is the gift of God. Christians should
take heed, and see that it always is so, lest by any means Christ should
be crucified afresh, and put to an open shame.
|
|

Back to
Arminianism
|